Small venues spent 248 million pounds putting on music and took 131 million at the door, and the proposal to close that gap is a levy most gig-goers would never notice
The Grassroots Ticket Levy
There is a room on Shoreditch High Street, up a flight of stairs, that holds a hundred and fifty people if they like each other. I have seen four bands there who went on to headline festivals. I paid, on each occasion, less than ten pounds.
That room loses money on nearly every show it puts on. It has done for years. The reason it is still open is that the bar subsidises the music and the owner subsidises the bar.
There is a proposal that would help rooms like it, and it is so modest that I find it hard to understand why it has not simply been done.
The Numbers
The London Assembly set them out when it published a report on the night-time economy. According to its release, grassroots music venues spent 248 million pounds on presenting live music in 2023 but generated only 131 million in ticket revenue.
So for every pound a small venue spends on putting a band on a stage, it gets back about fifty-three pence at the door. The rest has to come from drinks, hire, other events or the owner’s pocket.
The same release gives the other half of the picture. Analysis by the charity that represents these venues showed that 88 of the 96 artists on the 2024 Glastonbury line-up, 92 per cent, began their careers playing grassroots venues.
Put those together. Small rooms are where nearly all successful acts start. And small rooms lose money doing it.
Who Gains
The people who benefit from that early, loss-making work are not the small rooms.
A band learns its trade over three years of playing to eighty people. It gets good. It gets noticed. Five years later it is selling out arenas at ninety pounds a ticket. The arena, the promoter, the ticketing company and the act all do well.
The room up the stairs, where they played their eleventh gig to forty people on a Tuesday, gets nothing. It may have closed by then.
In football, when a player who came up through a small club is sold for millions, a share goes back to the club that trained him. Music has had no equivalent.
The Proposal
The idea is a levy. A small sum, a pound is the usual figure, added to every ticket for an arena or stadium show. The money goes into a fund that supports grassroots venues, artists and promoters.
The Assembly’s committee recommended that the Mayor advocate for London’s live music industry to introduce a voluntary levy on arena and stadium tickets to support grassroots venues.
The nightlife taskforce that reported this January went further. Its report refers to the aim of achieving the national one-pound ticket levy on stadium and arena tickets.
A pound on a ninety-pound ticket is about one per cent. On top of a booking fee that is commonly ten or fifteen. I do not believe a single person has ever decided not to see a stadium show because of a pound.
Why It Has Not Simply Happened
The word that causes the trouble is “voluntary.”
The government has said it wants the industry to do this itself. Some have. A number of major artists have added a levy to their own tours, and some venues and promoters have agreed to participate. That is to their credit.
But voluntary means patchy. One tour does it and the next does not. Some of the largest companies in live music have been slow. And there are arguments about detail that can be spun out indefinitely. Who collects the pound: the venue, the promoter, the ticketing company or the artist? Who holds the fund? Who decides which venues get what?
Each party in the chain has a reason to prefer that another should pay. The arena says it is the promoter’s show. The promoter says margins are thin and the artist sets the price. The artist’s management says the ticketing company’s fees are the real problem.
Meanwhile venues go on closing. The charity that represents them has in recent years put the rate at roughly two a week across the country.
The Case Against a Compulsory Levy
There are honest objections and I should give them.
It is, in effect, a tax on fans. Ticket prices are already high and resented. Adding to them, however slightly, in order to subsidise businesses is a choice that should be made openly.
It may prop up venues that are not viable. Some small rooms lose money because they are badly run. A fund has to decide who deserves support, and that is not straightforward.
The big end of the industry points out that it already invests in new talent in its own ways, and that arenas and stadiums have their own costs.
And a statutory levy means legislation, a collecting body and administration. Some of each pound would be eaten by the machinery.
Why I Think It Should Happen Anyway
None of those objections seems to me to outweigh the plain facts. The big shows depend on a supply of artists. The supply comes from small rooms. The small rooms are closing.
An industry that does not maintain its own pipeline will, in fifteen years, have fewer acts capable of filling its arenas. The levy is not charity. It is maintenance.
If the industry will do it voluntarily and universally, good. If, after a fair interval, large parts of it have not, then it should be made compulsory. The government has said as much. The interval has been running for a while.
What It Would Mean on Shoreditch High Street
I asked the owner of the room up the stairs what a grant from such a fund would do. He did not ask for much. He said a few thousand pounds a year would cover the gap on the nights he puts on new bands who bring thirty people.
Those are the nights he is always tempted to cancel. A club night or a private hire in the same slot would make money. He keeps doing the new bands because, he says, that is what the room is for.
A pound from each person at one night of a stadium tour would fund that room for a decade.
What You Can Do
Go to a small gig. That is the first thing. The door money matters, and the bar money matters more.
When you buy an arena ticket, look for whether the levy is included. Some tours say so. If your favourite act is not doing it, they are reachable on social media.
And if a small venue near you is in trouble, turn up. I have written too many obituaries for rooms that everyone loved and nobody went to.
The London Prat has stood at the back of small rooms since the skiffle craze and reports on them in its British satirical news on a pound on the ticket and its London satirical news about small venues. Bohiney Magazine covers a country where the service fee is larger than the ticket.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
